Popularity Contest

Search:

Apologies in advance; recollections of this gig are somewhat hazy 6 months on but a review you shall get regardless!

First things first, the support. Yeah, I don’t remember anything about them even if I do still recognise the names. The support on the night was from Spectrals, Summer Camp and Veronica Falls. That’s as much as I can say I’m afraid music fans.

The main act themselves, Slow Club, came bounding on stage, joined by their bass player and drummer and launched straight into a new tracks which was a brave move but one the crowd enjoyed nonetheless.

This high tempo start continued witha surprising early playing of Our Most Brilliant Friends, one of my personal favourites, and Giving Up On Love, allowing for a frantic opening which doesn’t quite fit in with the whole feel of their album; 2009’s ‘Yeah, So’.

After that, the tempo finally dropped with old and new songs alike. The new material sounded very promising and was played with such feeling and assertiveness that it would be difficult for someone unaware of their material to tell the tried and tested tracks from the new and this all points towards a wonderful second album, whenever it may appear.

Of the older songs, the one that sticks out for me was Rebecca’s solo ‘Sorry For The Doom’ which had the packed out Koko transfixed. It did feel at times that the duo were in awe of the crowd as much as the crowd were of them but this didn’t show through too much once the band had settled into their set. In between tracks, the pair also loosened up during the night and were very quaint with Rebecca telling a joke a Waitrose Christmas cracker would be proud of (“What did the cheese say to itself in the mirror? Halloumi”).

The highlights for me though were the two tracks played unplugged with ‘Wild Blue Milk’ coming partway through the set while ‘Christmas TV’ closed off the evening. Thankfully, the crowd showed the respect the tracks deserved giving an eerie hush to such a large audience, meaning the tracks worked well.

On the night, I was very impressed with Slow Club. They overcame the nerves they seemed to have playing to their biggest audience to date and once they had settled on stage, they made it feel like a much more intimate venue than Koko actually is. Not bad for a band once described to me as the “staple support act of Sheffield”.